We all want to live long, happy and healthy lives. And we want our pets to do the same. What one eats and drinks taking into account activity level is a major influence on health and happiness of humans and animals. With our busy pace of life it can be difficult to track and understand what one consumes on a daily, weekly or yearly basis. And measuring and monitoring our consumption and behavior may make us aware of things we take for granted or that are easily missed. And if we track what we consume and what we do, it is easier for caretakers like physicians, trainers, coaches or even parents to make specific, personalized recommendations to improve nutrition, improve performance, lose, gain or maintain weight. Until now, it has not been practical to track everything we eat and drink and then to use that information to make personalized, daily, or real-time recommendations. Until now.
It is now possible to connect every day devices to a network i.e. via Wi-Fi and record, track, measure, weigh, test and sample what they interact with. Widely referred to as The Internet of Things, the quantified human and pet is here. And using Machine Learning and AI to analyze the endless amounts of data that can now be collected, enables us to compare these large data samples to an individual—and make highly specific recommendations, fine tuned regimens and therapies that will help humans and pets manage and monitor their intake, seamlessly and when applied and adhered to, we can improve our health and mental wellbeing.
Humans
Obesity, a worldwide epidemic, and causes increased risk for multiple serious conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and cancer which can shorten the human life span, decrease quality of life and cost tremendous amounts of money to treat, reverse and/or to slow the decline in health. Modern day life has introduced key contributors to obesity, including but not limited to: high caloric foods that are readily available and inexpensive; transportation that decreases the requirements for the amount of physical activity required on a daily basis; and more and more the ability have almost anything delivered to your home for minimal to no (perceived) cost. The result is that the caloric impact of food has become hard to understand, track, measure and compare relative to the amount of activity it takes to maintain the same weight, or to lose weight and even gain weight.
On the therapeutic side detailed tracking of consumption is useful to help rehabilitate or maintain health, or even optimize a high performing athlete's physical performance. For example, those who may not be physically or mentally capable of monitoring their food and fluid intake like the very sick, very young, or very old. Enabling caretakers like nurses, doctors, nutritionists, trainers and coaches to track the individual with no effort on the individual's part will make therapy, training and rehabilitation easier to assess what they need, like in a hospital or treatment center.
Animals and Pets
More than half of pets (dogs and cats) are overweight or obese which shortens their life spans and causes expensive, painful health problems like diabetes and arthritis. Helping humans feed their pets the right amount, and making it easy to do so, will help dogs and cats live longer healthier lives. In a broader category, like farm animals, understanding what livestock consume can also improve the health of the individual animal and overall herd/group improving yields- of eggs or milk for example. And just like fine tuning an athlete's nutrition and consumption, a race horse's health and performance could be quantified and improved helping them win more races, recover from injuries or live longer to breed.
Therefore, what is needed is a smart eating, feeding and drinking (consumption) system/platform that makes it easy and seamless to measure, monitor, limit and even increase when necessary, caloric and fluid intake and that dynamically assesses consumption in real-time, making highly specialized and relevant recommendations and changes in regimen that will improve human and animal health and happiness.